Ikenga

Also Known As: the horned shrine of the right hand, aka ikenga; the name is built on ike, power or strength, and is glossed variously as strength of movement or place of strength; related horned shrines among neighbouring peoples are the Edo ikegobo and the Urhobo and Isoko ivri
Region/Culture: West Africa
Mythos: Igbo Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Mythological Objects
Mythical Attributes: A carved, horned figure that holds the power of its owner’s right hand together with his personal spirit, his chi, and the support of his ancestors.
Role in Mythos: It is the household shrine through which an Igbo man asks for, and gives thanks for, success in work, war and standing.
Relation to Humans: A man usually had his ikenga carved before marriage, had it consecrated before his kinsmen, and fed it kola, wine and blood for the rest of his life. When he died its work was over, and it was destroyed or buried with him.

The horns come first. Whatever else an ikenga carver leaves out, and some leave out nearly everything, there are always the two great curves rising from the head, thick at the root and sweeping back like a ram’s. Below them the wood may be a whole seated man with a blade in his fist, or only a face on a post. The horns are the point. They mean power, and they mean the kind of drive that does not wait to be asked.

Among the Igbo of southeastern Nigeria, the ikenga is a shrine to the right hand. That sounds like a riddle until it is spelled out. The right hand is the one that swings the hoe in the yam field, grips the machete in war, and holds the tools of the smith and the carver. It is the hand that does things. A man’s success in life, in the Igbo view recorded by museum curators and art historians alike, comes from what that hand achieves, and the ikenga gives that hand a home where it can be honoured, fed and asked for more.

The power in the carving is not only the hand’s. Igbo commentators describe the ikenga as gathering several forces into one place: the owner’s chi, the personal spirit that shapes each person’s fortune; his ndichie, the ancestors of his line; and ike, plain strength. Herbert M. Cole and Chike C. Aniakor, whose 1984 catalogue *Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos* remains the standard survey, treat the figure as a go-between linking the world of spirits to the world of work. A man without the backing of his chi and his kin could carve all he liked. The wood would stay wood.

So the ikenga had to be woken. A young man commissioned his from a skilled carver, usually before he married, and then brought it before his kinsmen or his age-mates. The head of his lineage performed the consecration, with offerings of yam, a cockerel, palm wine, kola nuts and alligator pepper. How lavish the ceremony was depended on how much the young man could afford. From that day the figure was his for life.

Its everyday care was simple and constant. A devoted owner broke kola for it in the morning and poured a little wine across its head. On the eve of something large, a long journey or a planting or a fight, he killed a cockerel or a ram and let the blood run over the carving, asking for the hand’s strength to hold. If things went well he came back and thanked it in the same way. Old figures in museum collections still carry a dark, crusted skin of these offerings, thickest on the head where the pouring always began.

Carvers made them in many sizes and grades. The colonial anthropologist M. D. W. Jeffreys sorted them into three broad kinds, as reported by the art historian Eli Bentor in the journal *African Arts* in 1988: the human figure seated on a stool, the stripped-down horned cylinder, and small simple pieces used in divination. Within those the range is wide. A young warrior’s ikenga sits on its stool holding a knife in the right hand and a severed head in the left, often wearing a fighter’s scalloped skirt. A senior titled man’s piece might rise into an elaborate superstructure of leopards, rams, snakes or birds, its face cut with the ichi marks of high rank. Some community ikenga, kept for a whole age set or a lineage, stand taller than a man. The British Museum holds one of the largest known outside Nigeria, about 180 centimetres high. A small seated figure with two curled horns sits in the National Museum in Lagos.

The carving could also be a statement of hope. Several sources note that the figure might show the honours a man wanted rather than the ones he had already won, a stool he had not yet earned, a title still ahead of him. An ikenga was a portrait of ambition as much as a record of it.

Then the owner died. A man’s right hand is buried with the man, and the shrine of that hand had nothing left to do. The carving was usually destroyed, sometimes buried beside him. No one inherited another man’s ikenga, because no one could inherit another man’s strength.

There is a further layer, and it is less certain. Some modern Igbo writers on traditional religion, among them John Umeh in *After God is Dibia* (1997 and 1999) and I. N. C. Nwosu in a 1983 collection of Igbo origin myths, speak of Ikenga not only as a household object but as a named horned god of time, achievement and the oldest calendar, with his own festival, and in Nwosu’s telling as a warrior son of the god Ngwu who led a battle against invaders from the west. The museum record and the field studies of the carvings say nothing of this. The ikenga that everyone agrees on is the one that sits in a man’s house and drinks his wine.

Close cousins appear just beyond Igbo country. The Edo of Benin keep a horned shrine of the hand called ikegobo, and the Urhobo and Isoko keep their own versions under the name ivri. The idea travels well: a carved place where the power to act is honoured, and a reminder that it has to be earned.

What the ikenga could do grew straight from what it held. With chi, ancestors and the strength of the hand behind him, its owner had the confidence to face practical difficulty, plant a hard field, win a fight or take a title. Its limits came from the same place. It answered only to the one man it was made for, worked only while he fed it and lived up to it, and could not outlast him. A neglected ikenga was a shrine to a hand that had stopped working, and a dead man’s ikenga was just wood with horns.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an ikenga?

An ikenga is a carved wooden shrine figure of the Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria, always marked by a pair of horns. It is a shrine to the owner’s right hand, the hand that farms, fights and works, and it holds the power of his personal spirit, or chi, and his ancestors. Owners make offerings to it to ask for success.

What do the horns on an ikenga mean?

The horns on an ikenga stand for power and drive. They appear on every type of ikenga, from the simplest horned cylinder to the most elaborate seated figure. Museum curators describe them as signs of masculine strength and determination.

Why does the ikenga warrior hold a knife and a severed head?

The warrior type of ikenga shows a seated man holding a knife in his right hand and a severed head in his left. The knife is a tool of action held in the right hand, which the ikenga honours. These figures were usually owned by younger men at the stage of life when they proved themselves in war.

What happens to an ikenga when its owner dies?

When the owner dies, his ikenga is usually destroyed, or sometimes buried with him. Its role as a link between that man and the spirit world is over. An ikenga is never passed on to someone else.

Is Ikenga a god?

Mainly, ikenga is a personal shrine object rather than a god, holding the owner’s chi, ancestral support and strength. Some modern Igbo writers, such as John Umeh and I. N. C. Nwosu, also describe Ikenga as a named horned god of achievement and time. The museum and field record of the carvings does not describe it that way.